Case Number 24289: Small Claims Court

THE TURIN HORSE (BLU-RAY)

The Charge

"Of the horse, we know nothing."

The Case

Were my review to do justice to Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse, its
length would dwarf War and Peace. It would have to be a catalog of each
second of the film's two hours and twenty-six minutes and my extreme reactions,
from ecstasy and boredom. Even then, the review would risk missing so much of
The Turin Horse -- the way grain plays with light and shadow, or the way
the wind becomes so constant it is both comforting and horrifying. Not even
biography would come to the rescue. Sure this is one of only a handful of
Béla Tarr's feature films and, he claims, his last, but even these few
facts pale under the sheer weight of the film.

What is most maddening is that The Turin Horse is easy to describe:
the entire "plot" revolves around a father, his daughter, and the horse they
keep on a small, windswept farm outside of Turin. They wake up, she dresses him,
they eat potatoes. That's pretty much it. Sure, some people attempt to visit,
but their presences are more allegorical (think The Seventh Seal) than
narrative. A voiceover tells us that the horse of the title is the famous horse
that Frederich Nietzsche saw being beaten, the one he embraced before going mad
and spending the rest of his days under care. Even that offers little, aside
from the too-easy temptation to read everything in the films in Nietzschian
terms.

What, then, to write about such a baffling film? First, it's easy:
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Chances are if you haven't already
heard of The Turin Horse or Béla Tarr, then you could (and maybe
should) live your life without this movie. I don't say that to sound like a
snob; no, this movie is just so far outside of mainstream expectations regarding
movies that if you're not already traveling in those circles then this is
probably not the film to convert you. If, on the other hand, you're one of the
few people who thought Terrence Malick's Tree of Life moved a bit too
quickly and was too easy to understand, The Turin Horse may be the kind
of film for you.

Though it is usually customary to evaluate the film proper before addressing
the specifics of a release, it is worth lingering here on the extras included
with The Turin Horse (Blu-ray). The extras include a booklet with an
essay by critic J. Hoberman, an audio commentary by critic Jonanthan Rosenbaum,
an early Béla Tarr short, a 50-minute press conference with the cast and
crew, and an 80-minute Q&A with Tarr at the Walker Art Center. These extras
are all excellent, providing insight into the film and how it was made. More
importantly, they provide context for a film that desperately needs it. Without
any context, I doubt most viewers would make it until the film's first line of
dialogue (which is 20 minutes into the film). Also, while other films benefit
from critical postmortems (see, for instance, pretty much every Criterion
release), The Turin Horsedemands such attention. Love the film or
hate it, without some kind of discussion to process the film, it remains almost
meaningless. Without someone putting ideas forth that viewers can agree or
disagree with, The Turin Horse remains a total mystery.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that someone did want to see The
Turin Horse (an idea I wholeheartedly endorse for the adventurous viewer).
What can that person expect? Basically, they will get thirty shots in two hours
and twenty-three minutes. Each of those thirty shots will be a masterful short
film in itself. The supple camera moves often, framing the actors with light and
shadow, drawing them out of the wind-burned landscape. Details -- like hands
scraping the skin of a potato -- will emerge, and some of them will strike with
a breathtaking beauty, while others will reveal the sheer weight of our
existence.

I won't even pretend to know what the film means; Tarr claims it's about the
"the unbearable heaviness of being." I don't disagree -- Tarr makes basic
survival seem like a Herculean task -- but beyond that, I don't know what to
take away from the film.

Though the film is sure to be polarizing with viewers, I think everyone can
agree that The Turin Horse (Blu-ray) looks perfect. The 1.66:1/1080p
AVC-encoded transfer is replete with all kinds of fine detail, and the
black-and-white cinematography maintains perfect contrast throughout. Black
levels are deep and detailed, and grain is handled wonderfully, looking
remarkably filmlike. The DTS-HD 2.0 track is equally impressive. There's good
stereo separation in the Hungarian dialogue, and the wind is a constant presence
throughout. Even the strange, hypnotic score sounds remarkably detailed.

For those who caught Tarr's last film on the festival circuit (or enjoyed
his seven-hour epic Satantango), this Blu-ray is easy to recommend. The
picture and sound are essentially perfect, and the extras add both context from
critics and Tarr himself. For adventurous viewers looking to push their personal
cinematic boundaries, The Turin Horse would be a fine disc to rent. At
143 minutes, it takes a dedicated evening of viewing to get through, but those
willing to take the plunge will be rewarded with some of the best
black-and-white images of the twenty-first century. Those who spend more time at
the multiplex than the art house would probably do best to avoid The Turin
Horse. With next to no plot, a funereal pace, and nothing to latch onto
aside from the black-and-white cinematography, it's likely to be a hard slog to
viewers unaccustomed to such cinematic offerings.